


Where You Are

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Origin Story, Partners to Lovers, Partnership
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 03:27:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10913373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: She can’t believe she's letting him talk her into this.





	Where You Are

**Author's Note:**

> An insert/tag for “Anatomy of a Murder” (3 x 05). One Shot.

Nothing can have as its destination 

anything other than its origin. 

— Simone Weil

 

* * *

 

She can’t believe she's letting him talk her into this. 

Not talking to Maloney. She was going to do that anyway. Of course she was, and that’s what he says when she tells him. When he drops into his chair and snatches up his own part of Amy’s file to pore over. 

“I knew it. I _knew_ you wouldn’t let them go to jail.” 

He smiles wide. Smiles hard down at the page. An _n_ th generation photocopy with cramped, blurred text that carves deep furrows in his brow as he frowns down at it. 

She was always going to do that for them. Greg and Amy. That was always a given, but he’s relieved, to hear it from her mouth. He’d come armed with an argument. Two arguments, and there’s the first done away with, so he dives right into the next.  The one he’s sure he’ll have to work for. 

“It’s a forty-minute drive.” 

She’s walking. He’s following. There’s a rhythm to it. A familiar rightness that’s been missing since he came back. It should make her suspicious. The grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. The way she knows exactly when it’s her turn, and so does he. 

It’s not her turn yet, so she leads on. She winds through the bullpen and drops off her dirty mug. She lingers at the sink. Takes the time to scrub it out and rinse. To scare up one of the flour-sack hand towels no one ever uses. She leaves him on the hook as she dries out the mug with infinite care. 

“They didn’t hurt anyone,” he pleads with widespread hands, and that’s her cue. 

“Our Jane Doe might disagree.” She spins toward him. She arches a brow, and his face falls.

She’s almost disappointed. Hell, she _is_ disappointed. Because the fact is she’s _not_ suspicious of this. The back-and-forth between them, even when there’s his ex-wife. Even when there’s Josh, and she’s still smack dab in the middle of the butterfly phase with him. She’s still not the least bit suspicious of the way things just work between _them._ Her and Castle. 

She strides past him, out of the break room. He follows, silent for a good long while. Silent as she punches the down button for the elevator, and silent as the car glides downward, but he takes up the thread again. It’s his turn. 

“Ok. Body snatching. That’s bad.” He’s thinking on the fly. Skimming her attention from the surface of more serious things with it. The surface of things she ought to be thinking about, but isn’t. He’s playing his part to perfection, just like she is. “But he had to improvise. Valerie—Dr. Monroe—moved up the timeline. So maybe he had a plan—a _non–_ body snatching plan. Maybe he . . . ” 

He trails off. Blinks in the dim light of the parking structure. He jumps—actually jumps—when she clicks open the locks. He looks from her to the car to her to the car.  He looks around, finally realizing where they are. He almost laughs out loud. 

“Forty minutes _if_ you don’t stand there yacking until we’re caught in the morning rush.” She pops the door. She swings one foot inside and tips her head toward him. “You getting in or what, Castle?” 

“Getting in. Definitely getting in.” He jerks into motion. He slides into the passenger seat, grinning hard through the windshield. “Hit it, Detective.” 

* * *

 

Kate’s fingers hook on the wall. She stops as she turns the corner toward lock-up, not faltering exactly. Hesitating, though. Listening in, when it’s not like her all, but she stops. He stops, unerringly one step behind. He tries to lean past her. Listening in is definitely him. She swats him back. Shoos him well out of sight.

They’re a little nauseating. Greg and Amy, each of them straining against their cuffs to reach out with their free arm. Hunching as far forward as they can to kiss the back of one another’s hands. 

Their whispered affection is every bit as banal as their love letters. It’s every bit as redundant and clichéd. Every bit as adorable. 

Their voices go back and forth. Him and her and him again. Kate can almost see the words like cartoon bubbles over their heads. Amy’s big, round cursive, Greg’s jagged hybrid of block capitals and slanted lowercase.

She hears Castle sigh behind her and wonders for a second if it wasn’t her. That’s how far he’s dragged her into this whole Fast Food Fairy Godmother routine. She scowls at him over her shoulder, but he _tsks._ He’s done hanging back, or maybe he just senses it. It’s his job to know what people are going to say before they say it, and maybe that’s why he herds her further down the dingy, narrow hall just as Amy gives her the perfect opening.

“I can’t stand the thought of you getting locked up over me.”

“Well, you might not have to.” 

Kate rolls open the heavy door and marvels how good it feels to do this. To watch their faces light up. To trade off lines with Castle and give hope, rather than grim answers. Possibility, rather than closure. 

What she does every day—what _they_ do every day—matters. It’s important and righteous and healing sometimes. But it’s punctuation. The definite end of a story, and this is a new chapter. It feels good. 

It’s what she almost says when Amy asks. A too-complex answer to a simple question. It’s what she almost says, but that’s not her line. 

“Someone convinced me that a love story as good as yours deserves a shot at a happy ending.” 

She doesn’t look at him. She doesn’t need to look to know that he’s quietly pleased. That he’s not just smiling over Greg and Amy. 

She elbows him harder than she needs to when he gets caught up in the moment and forgets the bag. He’s the one to scowl this time, and the give and take of it has her pressing her lips together against a smile. 

He hands the bag over and tells his dad joke about holding the onions. She rolls her eyes for good measure and they go.They leave the young lovers to the dubious privacy of a holding cell. To the budget romance of warmed-over burgers, but she doubts either of them minds the things they don’t have at the moment. 

* * *

They split off from one another at the bullpen. She has paperwork to turn over. She does, truly, but they split off. She leaves him behind, on a collision course with Esposito. She feels bad about it. She would, but everyone expects it of him. 

He's a romantic. He's stupidly generous and positively in love with big gestures and against-all-odds victories. Everyone expects him to drive to New Jersey and lay the white tablecloth for two kids who very nearly got away with their madcap prison break. 

No one expects it of _her,_ though, and she's not up for it. For the ribbing and the knowing glances. She's not up for anything more complicated than the win she's just had. Anything more complicated than her role as Castle's very silent partner in crime.

But they're not even talking about that when she hands off her paperwork and drifts in their direction. They're not talking about what Castle did or didn't do. What she did or didn't do, and she knows suddenly—definitely—that she has him to thank for that. 

She listens to them bicker and she knows without a doubt that he knows she wouldn't want it to get out. That she's not eager for that fact that big, bad Detective Beckett has a softer side to be common knowledge. He smiles at her, an aside as he bickers with Esposito, and she knows he knows this is their own little caper. 

She knows he knows, and she calls out without thinking, "Don't worry, Castle. I'd get you out.”

She's smiling to herself. Rolling her shoulders and letting her spine pop into its end-of-day lines. End of however many days it’s been on this one, but something’s not right. The back of her neck prickles and she swings back toward him. 

He’s standing by Esposito, gawping. Looking lightning struck, and she kind of can’t wait to find out why. She kind of can’t wait to hear what ridiculous idea has him all lit up now. 

“You coming?”

“Yeah.” 

He launches himself toward her. He closes the gap and falls in step, silent. She waits. Counts to herself and makes a bet how long it’ll be. How high she’ll get. It’s less than ten before it spills out of him. She fights a smile. She calls the elevator and pretends she’s hardly listening. 

“We need a place we met,” he says, like it’s a tough conclusion he’s come to. “The first time. And don’t say the book party, because that place was kind of a dump.” 

She doesn’t say anything. She tips her head back against the elevator wall and stares hard at the ceiling. She brings one palm hard against her stomach. Against the sudden butterflies of memory. The scent of furniture polish and the reassuring rise of real wood bookshelves high to her right and left as she wound her way through the aisle of the the hole-in-the-wall store with a hundred other people. Two, three, four hundred. She’d waited for hours. 

He’d flirted with her. With everyone, but she’d thought and didn’t think it was a little more with her. She thought and didn’t think, because it was silly. Ridiculous to think she could’ve stood out of the crowd at all, but he’d teased her a little for being tongue-tied. 

_Kate. You’re sure now? That’s your final answer._

She’s screwed up her face. She’d hit him with the full force of her glare and he’d smiled. He’d looked entirely delighted as he’d signed the book: _To Definitely Kate—If looks could kill . . ._

She laughs out loud, remembering. She lets her hands drop to her sides and her head roll toward him. He’s the one scowling now. The one hitting her with what passes for a glare. He’s no good at it. The tiny lines around his eyes give him away. Everything gives him away, and she should be suspicious of that. But she’s not. 

“Beckett. You’re not taking this seriously. We _need_ an origin story, and don’t say Interrogation 1.” He holds up a hand, not letting her get a word in edgewise. “Entertained for its salacious undertones, rejected for the nicotine baked into the walls and whatever else contributes to that weird smell —” 

“I’ve got it,” she barges in, finally. 

His mouth snaps shut. He looks at her, confused. “You’ve got it?” 

She pushes herself off the elevator wall exactly as the doors ding open. She leads. He follows. Right through the lobby. Right out into the finally dawning day. She turns to face him, and he’s waiting.

“You’ve got _what_?” 

He’s holding his breath, eager for the story, but the wind kicks up. A howl of late October that calls up a pang of melancholy. It’s not the right time. She knows it’s not the right time for it.   

She shakes her head. Tucks her chin into the collar of her coat as if she can drop the details there for safe keeping. 

It was later in the year, then. November. Almost her birthday, but now’s not the time to tell him about it. She smiles at him sideways, though. Relishes the consternation on his face. The impatience giving way to sheer outrage as she turns and leaves him standing there. Leaves him at the corner to go his own way. 

She counts to her own steps. She doesn’t make it to ten before she spins on a heel and calls out to him. 

“Origin story, Castle.” The grin takes over her face. She can’t help it. She doesn’t try. “Got it covered.” 

**Author's Note:**

> They're so ridiculously, adorably flirty in this episode, and they each float conversation about Gina and Josh like the fact that they're with other people will save them. Oh, you silly bebes.


End file.
